


Substitutions may change the flavor profile

by daroos



Category: The Avengers (2012), The Unusuals
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Crossover, Depressed Steve, Gen, Jeremy Renner Character Combinations, Walsh isn't trained for this shit, diner porn, doppleganger, secret twin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clint is kidnapped, the Avengers need a quick substitute for their resident snark machine.  Or, the time Detective Walsh got guilt tripped by Captain America into pretending to be his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Substitutions may change the flavor profile

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand, thousand Thankyous to meinterrupted AKA Shinykari for her beta. Without her this would contain a lot less sense.
> 
> This fic shall be used for my Trope Bingo square, secret twin/doppleganger.
> 
> As always comments, concerns and concrit are appreciated.

The smell of expensive, lovingly brewed coffee with more provenance papers than some gallery art insinuated itself into Clint’s consciousness. It was the sort of coffee that Phil used to root out in the slivers of free time before missions really got brewing. He’d show up at their hideout with small paper cups of dark black liquid, or sometimes tiny crema-topped shot glasses, pleasure crinkling the fine lines around his eyes. 

Clint knew himself well enough to know he didn’t appreciate the finer points of the expensive brews. He felt somewhat wasteful drinking them with Phil who tried to get him to taste the blueberries, loam, or brown sugar notes. Clint had burned out most of his taste buds over years of carnie food and abject poverty, and his sense of smell wasn’t what it once had been after an unfortunate concussion and exposure to some aerosolized chemical in Luxembourg. Coffee was hot, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, and sometimes with the nourishing, fatty feel of cream on his tongue. It was comfort and understanding. It was something he simply didn’t have the stomach for at the moment. He turned back to the windows, tracking the flight of pigeons from rooftop to rooftop.

“I didn’t know what everyone’s usual was so I asked them to send up a variety,” Pepper announced, still the hostess even after becoming a CEO. Clint watched the reflections of the team he’d fought with so recently interacting in the windows. Clint didn’t want a drink. Really. It wasn’t really for him, anyway; he was just visiting the Tower because Fury had made it an order. Stark had a friendly arm slung around an unresisting Dr. Banner while he sketched things using his coffee cup in the array of holograms displayed on a tabletop. Natasha slid by the tray and picked up a mug of tea with the same grace she would use to lift keycards off a mark. Thor was working his charm on a hunch-shouldered Rogers, affability and mutual culture shock winning out over Rogers’ shy reticence.

Clint jumped when a hand, light as a landing bird, touched his tricep. “Oh!” Pepper swallowed a surprised little noise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Clint breathed out. “No, I’ve just—” Clint wrapped his arms around his middle, disguising the motion as manfully crossing his arms over his chest.

Pepper nodded sympathetically. “My nerves have been shot since... The counselor says it’s normal and that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, but, well. It’s not like this is the first time this kind of thing has happened. And between the relief efforts and the PR nightmare...” Pepper looked weary.

“Your counselor is right - you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. This kind of thing never gets easier, and we almost lost Tony. We did lose— I don’t think anybody would expect you to be okay.”

Pepper gave him a shrewd, pointed look. “Exactly. Nobody would expect that.” She quirked a challenging eyebrow at him. 

Clint flushed, realizing she fully intended to turn his kind words back on him. “That’s not— SHIELD is—”

The look she gave him clearly said, _don’t even go there_. He didn’t know Pepper, but she seemed to be able to read him like a book. Given his normally unemotive exterior, that was alarming. “Here.” She held a tall mug containing a murky, milky blend of coffee and probably sugar. 

Clint took it automatically before his mouth could catch up to his body. “No, I don’t-”

“If you don’t keep that I’ll feel like I’ve been a bad host,” Pepper told him firmly, drinking serenely from her own cup. The coffee was sweet and rich and reminded him somehow of birthday cake and steamy nights in Singapore. Pepper startled him again by looping her arm through his elbow and staring out the window with him for long, silent moments. The conversations behind them ebbed and flowed. “All I can think about when I look out these windows is how easy it would be to get thrown through them,” Pepper said quietly, leaning a bit of her weight into Clint.

“It’s tempered glass,” Clint replied before his brain could catch up with, _stupid, stupid, that’s not what she wants to hear._

Pepper snorted a delicate little laugh. “Tony annealed some sort of catch-net fibres into it, too. The patent is pending on the process. He shot the Mark VII at plate of the stuff to prove to me that it would stand up to the impact.”

“Oh.”

“That’s why it’s called an irrational fear,” Pepper told him conspiratorially.

“Robin Hood,” Stark called, approaching Pepper and Clint’s quiet bubble, “are you making time with my girl?” Clint tried to put some space between himself and Pepper. As much as she didn’t weigh anything, she was surprisingly strong and well attached to his arm. With the same grace Natasha sometimes used on him, she maneuvered them both to face Stark while making the movement look as though it was his idea.

“Your girl?” she asked with a pointed eyebrow raised.

“My.... honored mistress?” Stark tried. “Look, there are a lot worse things I could be— this isn’t about that.”

“What is it about?” Clint asked warily. He didn’t want the industrialist thinking he was trying anything with Pepper. He knew she was too good for him even if she had not already declared her allegiances to Stark Industries more than a decade ago.

“I got some specs you need to look at. I was just going to set you up with the sweetest bachelor pad this side of 20th, but Pep said you guys should get some input before I set the contractors on it.”

“I have quarters,” Clint stated defensively. He didn’t enjoy feeling like a charity case, and he had the feeling that it was a feeling Stark foisted on a lot of people simply through obliviousness of his own ostentatious wealth and a forceful personality that didn’t often consider how other would consider his financial forwardness.

“Yes, and just thinking about the closet you probably live in makes me get blotchy. This isn’t about you, Secret Agent Man; I need to protect my assets.”

“I’m SHIELD’s asset,” Clint replied curtly, setting his coffee down on a ledge because he was starting to get pissed and lately that had been leading to anything from throwing things to throwing up.

Pepper’s hands tightened around his bicep as though bracing him or herself. “Not anymore.” 

Clint felt the familiar flash of hot-cold adrenaline through him, the urge to punch Stark and sprint for the balcony to throw himself off and _escape_ roiling into a bilous snake in his belly. He locked his knees and resolutely stood his ground. Natasha watched the tableau he had inadvertently formed with hard, scared eyes. Most of him was glad she didn’t rush to his aid like he was a crying child, but a mewling part of him wished he could curl up in her familiar presence and hide behind the curtain of her red hair and threatening aura. Stark had continued to talk but Clint hadn’t caught any of it.

Pepper was talking too, he realized, words flowing together with Stark’s into a simultaneous argument/counterargument wending its way through censorious, to indignant, to an abrupt halt.

“You’re going to need to explain that in very small words right the fuck now,” he said quietly. With the luck he had, Clint said it into a lull in every conversation drawing the attention of everyone not already involved. _Goddamnit_ , Clint thought, the shot of adrenaline muddling his thoughts and denying him his usual clarity.

“That’s why you’re here,” Stark said as though it was self-evident.

Clint stared.

“The World Security Council didn’t want to keep you on, so I said I wanted you.”

“You— I’m not a fucking stray dog. You can’t put in for adoption papers and give—”

Stark talked over him, “I can and I did. And I can give you whatever the fuck I want, bird-boy.”

“I don’t have to take it.”

Stark had continued on, telling him exactly how easy it was to buy off the World Security Council apparently with Fury’s help. “Tony, stop,” Pepper hissed, furious, fingers gripping into Clint’s arm hard enough that there might be marks.

The congenial bliss from a few moments before was shattered, and Clint was sure it was his fault. Natasha appeared at his side, pressing a rocks glass into his hand with a generous dose of whiskey, or perhaps bourbon. She shot a venomous glare at Stark. Clint took a hefty mouthful of the liquor and felt it go to war with his adrenaline response. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he’d simply kept to himself and not followed Fury’s lead on coming to the Tower he would still be under the illusion that he wasn’t a commodity to be bought and sold by powers beyond his control.

“I’m not your pet and I’m not your slave. Go fuck yourself.” Clint felt proud that his words came out furious and violent instead of broken and scared. Pepper’s grip on his arm loosened and she allowed him to turn from Stark’s slightly sarcastic expression and leave.

He didn’t exactly lose time so much as spend a protracted period not caring where he was going and not paying any particular attention beyond to not walk into traffic. He came back to himself, perched in a tree in a slip of green space looking out over the water towards New Jersey. The wind was cold and damp and stuck to his skin in the way ocean breezes did. He leaned against the trunk of the sturdy, stately old beast he’d climbed, feeling the adrenaline leaving his system like a retreating tide. His head ached and his hands felt unsteady like they never did after actual combat. He wanted a drink, water or liquor, and he wanted to shut off his brain until he could surface and things would make sense. He wanted someone to stand, blocking out the world for him; someone to tell him it would be okay.

SHIELD didn’t want him. He’d always suspected Coulson was the thing standing between him and an unceremonious boot from the covert organization. Being thrown to the curb so roughly was a rude awakening; Fury hadn’t even bothered to tell him himself. His head really hurt.

A loud phone conversation broke into his thoughts. “Yeah, I’m here, but I don’t see him.” Clint swung his head lazily towards the voice. Leaves blocked most of his vision in the appropriate direction. “Yes. No. No, he is not. I don’t care what the tracer says.” Clint tensed. A pair of khakis wearing boots walked into his line of sight and he knew who it was. “Well maybe he knew you would use his cell to trace him and he wasn’t in the mood to talk,” Captain America bit off harshly, obviously angry at the person on the other end of the line. “No - be quiet. I don’t blame him one bit for flying off the handle at you. That was incredibly insensitive. I would say I can’t believe you told him like that but I know you and I _can_ believe it.” Rogers sounded disappointed as well as angry. He was talking to Stark, then. “Yes, I’ll keep looking around, but he probably ditched the tracker in the garbage here.”

Rogers pressed angrily at his phone for a few moments and slipped it into his pocket. If he’d been inclined, Clint could have leapt onto his shoulders from where he was perched. Rogers ran his hand through his hair, thoroughly mussing it in a show of agitation. “Where did you go, Clint?” Rogers muttered to himself.

“You should learn to look up.”

Rogers startled almost like a cartoon character, leaping back and twisting simultaneously. He started laughing; the relieved, it’s not really funny, laugh. “I guess I should.”

Clint felt too bone-weary to move from his relatively comfortable position so he just stared down at Rogers. “So... you probably heard all of that, right?”

“A-yup,” Clint replied, almost calmly. He wondered when he had begun feeling calm or if it was just exhaustion and grief.

“Do you mind if I come up there?”

“It’s a public tree,” Clint waved an expansive hand with the statement. Upon reflection it might be owned by one of the skyscrapers towering behind him - he wasn’t actually sure. Rogers took that as invitation, leaping and swinging with an inhuman strength until he was a little below Clint and on a branch enough to the side of him that they could see one another. Rogers settled, not as comfortably as Clint, but as though he were in for the long haul.

“That was a really nasty thing Tony did, there,” Rogers said finally. Clint shrugged with one shoulder. Was there a nice way to tell you that the organization which had given you purpose and foundation through the better part of your life wanted you to get the fuck out? Stark’s way might have been kinder than the alternative; no pity, no bargaining, no last chance for him to make a dick of himself.

Clint made a noncommittal grunt.

“He actually— he was going to ask us all to move in. He did it probably the most horrible way possible, but... The Avengers were Director Fury’s idea, but it’s an idea he wants to see fly on its own. Stark is willing to act as a civilian patron to the program which would give the Avengers options in areas where SHIELD and the World Security Council have to tread lightly.”

Clint rolled the back of his head along the tree trunk, enjoying the feeling of rough bark through his hair and on his scalp. It was a petulant gesture, and childish, but it was a tactile grounding to the physical world. It felt like scraping some of the horrible feelings off of his thoughts.

“Ms. Romanoff is the only one maintaining official ties with SHIELD as our military liaison. I’ve received my discharge papers and Dr. Banner is no longer under government surveillance.”

“So everyone is doing it?” Clint replied in a tone he knew was mulish.

Steve didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “Well, yes. I know you had a place that was yours at SHIELD but if we’re going to make this Avengers thing work, it really does make sense to bunk together. Tony is being rather gracious with the space in his building for the Avengers Initiative.”

“He just wants to keep us like his pet menagerie. I was doing good work for SHIELD. I had _always_ done good work for SHIELD. Before—” Clint choked, and goddamn it, he was crying. He was fucking crying in front of goddamned Captain America over losing his job.

“The last couple of weeks have been hard.” Steve’s voice was a lot closer; he was standing balanced on his tree branch, head on the level with Clint’s knee. He put a warm hand on Clint’s arm in a rather awkward gesture of comfort. “It’s been harder on you than anyone, I think.” Clint shook off the tears angrily. “I think Tony’s trying to give us all a safe place to land in his own asinine way. He can say it like a real cad sometimes, but he’s trying to do the right thing by all of us.” They remained motionless for a long while, Clint not wanting to admit to leaning in to the contact on his shoulder, Steve not seeming concerned standing on a tree branch overlooking the water, thirty feet up on a windy day. “Have you eaten today?”

“If you’re going to blame this all on low blood sugar—”

“No, it’s just that I was hungry and I thought you might be too.”

Clint frowned to keep his smile from coming out. “I could eat.”

\--

Steve was never sure if Tony apologized properly, or if Clint forgave him because he didn’t see another option. Going after the archer had been the last thing they needed to cement a budding friendship. Steve and Clint could be a moody, morose pair, and Clint was prone to bouts of almost staged good cheer designed to detract from his low mood. Steve spent more time than he would have liked to admit grieving and worrying. Thor traveled back to Asgard for the trial of his brother, and the Tower was that much quieter, moodiness seeping through the perfectly clear windows.

Some time after they had all moved into the Tower, Steve had started walking. A lot. He would spend the entire night treading streets that were unrecognizable in parts and hauntingly familiar in others. Some mornings he would go out jogging and just... keep going. He'd stop at bodegas for snacks and sugary drinks, but beyond that he simply spent the day pounding pavement. He'd make twenty or thirty miles on his shortest runs.

Tony would give him worried looks when they'd cross paths in the kitchen, both still awake from the previous nights and filthy in their respective ways. Clint or Natasha would join him some mornings and he would cut them short to ten or twelve miles in deference to their shorter strides and non-superhuman stamina. Steve knew he should be doing more to knit the team together, but it just feel like too much. Instead he walked his beats. He still felt guilty for... so much. 

He’d read some of the accounts from survivors at Auschwitz and the other camps. He’d even listened to some of the taped interviews, trying to make sense of what was still an urgently recent and confusing time of his life. They had been survivors as well - his contemporaries and the people he had been fighting to liberate. They each dealt with the guilt of their own survival in different ways, but none had made sense to him until reading through a transcript of an interview one night.

_Intr: Do you feel guilty? Do you feel that you suffer from survivor’s guilt?_

_Subj: No, I don’t feel survivor’s guilt. I don’t feel guilt. I just miss my friends. I am sad every day that my family isn’t walking beside me._

If Steve was going to feel survivor’s guilt about anything it would be Bucky, and the yawning maw of grief was still so large that it occluded any other emotions. The place where his guilt would go was swallowed up by missing his friends and wishing the family he had built around himself was there to walk beside him.

"Let's go for a walk,” Clint ordered more than suggested.

Steve's head popped up from his sketch pad where he was mulling over a rendering of Farnsworth and Moretti arguing. Clint was wearing a hoodie and jeans acknowledging the cold weather and already had on his walking shoes. Steve flipped his sketch pad shut. "Yeah. Okay."

Clint's steps were staccato and quick, covering distance nearly as quickly as Steve's normal pace. He didn't appear to be in a hurry but they were heading somewhere definite. Conversation felt like it would be a monumental effort, so Steve let them walk in silence. It was still early and so they were caught up in washes of commuters periodically. Clint grabbed his arm and crossed the street abruptly, slipping into a diner. The windows were scratched and cloudy from years of use, and the stools were worn but clean. Clint hopped up on a stool across from the grill and motioned for Steve to join him.

When nobody showed up for a few minutes, Clint lay over the counter and grabbed two coffee cups and the steaming pot. Steve wanted to say something about manners and health codes but Clint's body language said 'relaxed' and 'familiar' so he held his peace.

A man walked out of the back room pulling his arms through a button down shirt. "Sorry about that. I was in the can."

"No problem," Clint replied. The other man's head snapped up and Steve's breath caught. He looked at Clint who was watching him carefully, almost gleefully. He stared back at the other man who was glaring at Clint.

"Who's the clown?" the other man asked.

Apparently Clint’s clone worked in a diner a few miles from the Tower. Never let it be said that Captain America didn't know when to keep his mouth shut.

"That's Steve. I got your message and figured we'd stop by for breakfast."

The other Clint frowned. "Yeah, okay. We have omelettes or tacos today."

"Asado or carnitas?" Clint asked as though _his body double wasn't the one working the grill_. Or perhaps Clint asked exactly as one would if his body double were working the grill; Steve had never encountered this particular scenario to be able to say.

"What do you take me for? Carnitas and egg."

"I'll take the tacos. He'll have some of both," Clint finished, gesturing at Steve.

"Sure. You good for coffee?"

"Yeah. We're great."

It was like mirror Clints were interacting over the counter—same kind of smushed nose, same round ears, expressive forehead and slightly downturned mouth. Similar strong hands cupped Clint's coffee mug and worked over the grill, mixing and pouring, chopping and scraping.

"Name's Walsh, by the way. I'd shake but—" Walsh held up two kitchen tools he was using at the same time. The omelettes contents were becoming increasingly alarming.

"Are you two..." Steve wanted to say twins but didn't think it was possible. The file he had read mentioned a brother. "...brothers?"

Walsh barked a cynical sort of laugh. Clint chuckled. It was surprising to Steve how comforting it was that they didn't respond in identical manners. "Yeah, actually. We'd never met before I joined SHIELD, though."

"It was like some shit out of Mission Impossible, or something. Here I am one day, and him and this stuffed suit walk in the front door and sit down."

"Coulson found him in the vetting process." Clint added. Walsh crumbled potato chips into the omelettes with a flourish. "Turns out he was the result of my dad's, uh, 'donation', a few years before he and my mom..." Steve gave Clint a confused look. "My dad donated sperm. I'm not even sure how SHIELD tracked it, but they're never too concerned about 'legal'."

"So him and this stuffed suit—"

"Coulson," Clint broke in. "His name was Coulson. He died in the Battle of New York." Walsh's back stiffened. Still turned away from them he braced his hands on the counter and dropped his head.

"Phil," Steve added as almost an afterthought.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." Walsh took in a massive breath, sides expanding like bellows, and forced it out in a hard exhale. "We lost a lot of good people that day. I shouldn't have—"

"You didn't know."

"So Clint and Phil came in here and..." Steve tried to restart the conversation. Walsh almost visibly put himself back together and threw a few more things in the omelettes before dishing them up and setting one in front of Steve and one in front of himself. He followed them with plates of tacos still without talking. Walsh dropped two sets of silverware for them and picked up his own plate.

"Clint and Coulson walk in and sit down and it's like... It's like 'Holy fuck he's me!'."

"That must have been... very odd for you."

"It's not often you get brand new fully grown family showing up at a place." Steve dug into the potato chip, cheese, mystery omelette and was surprised to find it was actually good. "It was kinda nice, though. We're both a little low on that kind of thing."

"Family?" Steve asked.

"Good things showing up at our doors," Clint replied.

Walsh seemed to decide his omelette was cool enough and began shoveling it into his mouth in huge bites. Clint cradled a taco carefully. "I am going to make love to you with my mouth," he whispered to the taco before taking a messy bite.

\--

Steve didn’t like his team to think he was obsessed with their whereabouts, so he asked JARVIS not to mention the check-in protocol that he had set up. “Headcount?” Steve asked JARVIS, at this point more reflexive than consciously.

“Mr. Stark is in his workshop. Doctor Banner is asleep in the lab. Ms. Romanoff has been called in to SHIELD and Mr. Barton is offsite.”

“Where off-site?” The team didn’t make a regular habit of informing JARVIS where they were off to, but JARVIS was wired into microphones across all the living spaces and picked these things up.

“He left jogging approximately fifteen hours ago.”

“Fifteen—” Steve felt a spike of adrenaline drive through him. “How long ago was Ms. Romanoff called in?”

“Two hours, sir,” JARVIS replied. JARVIS sounded entirely too calm.

“Can you locate Clint’s phone? Any of his trackers?” Steve was already moving towards the workshop to shake Tony if this really was the emergency Steve’s gut told him it was.

“No, sir.”

“Has anybody from SHIELD attempted to contact us?”

“No, however Mr. Stark’s monitoring program indicates that SHIELD communique patterns are consistent with the initiation of a major action of some sort.”

Steve pounded on the glass walling in Tony’s workshop. Through his fingertips Steve could feel the thump thump of loud music, and the moment when it abruptly cut off. He pounded once more.

Tony shot a quizzical eyebrow at him, popping out from behind a welding mask. “Sir has given you permission to enter.” The door slid open smoothly.

“What’s up sugar-butt?”

“Clint is missing. I think SHIELD knows something and they’ve called in Natasha.”

“You’re saying someone stole my stuff and SHIELD—” Steve nodded, not really agreeing with classifying Clint as ‘Tony’s Stuff’ but not wanting to argue the semantics when it felt so much like time was of the essence. “That is it, I am going to knock some fucking bureaucratic skulls. Meet you on the roof?” Tony was already stripping off his work clothes to prep for flying.

\--

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Hill stated bluntly.

Natasha and AD Hill didn’t often agree, but in this they were united. Natasha nodded, eyes narrowed at Fury. Barton was missing. Barton was compromised, again. Barton was a mole. Barton was... Barton wasn’t where he should be and if she got him back again she was going to lo-jack the man and put him on a leash. She was tired of chasing after little parts of her soul when they got into trouble. “Barton was not interested in becoming a turncoat. He utilized his underworld contacts solely under the duress of mind control.” Natasha frowned as she spoke.

“His psych evals support Black Widow’s assessment,” Hill added. They were both facing down a very disgruntled Fury in the most private portion of SHIELD’s catacomb of meeting rooms. 

“Well, it’s either that or someone got the drop on him.”

“Is that out of the question?” Natasha asked. It wasn’t that she doubted Clint’s competence as an agent, but no matter how good someone was, there was always a way to get them. Natasha herself could think of a dozen ways she could capture Clint with only minimal help.

“No, but the World Security Council thinks it much more likely that he’s switched sides and is using this opportunity to leverage valuable intel from us before setting us out to dry.”

“With all due respect, Sir, fuck them.”

Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Hill, impressed. She was prone to profanity, but never in reference to her superiors. Hill met her expression with one of grim determination. She had been responsible for brokering Clint’s ‘trade’ to the Avengers team permanently. Partly that fact rankled Natasha, but she appreciated that Clint’s exit from SHIELD was inevitable. Perhaps slotting him into a new position before he had the opportunity to realize he had lost his old one was a sort of kindness. Natasha had heard Hill and Fury reference Clint as ‘their’ Avenger enough times to know that there was no true animosity about the reassignment, at least from their end.

“Do you agree with AD Hill?” Fury asked.

“I do.”

Fury’s goatee worked around as though he was chewing something bitter. “I wanted to get your opinions before showing you the communication.” He pulled up a series of documents; an initial ransom letter, a three-minute audio file timestamped an hour after the initial letter, and a minute-long audio file from half an hour after that. The letter stated they (whoever "they" were) had captured the Avenger known as Hawkeye and would return him in exchange for prisoners captured in a recent SHIELD action near Boston, and schematics for the miniaturized reflector panel technology which SHIELD had been engineering from the helicarrier panels. They promised to contact within an hour to arrange exchange with SHIELD. A similar letter with slightly different demands had been sent to the World Security Council.

The audio files were recordings of exchanges between the kidnappers and the Director.

The kidnappers used a computer generated voice to mask their identities. _“Do you agree to our terms?”_ the flatly robotic voice asked.

_“Fuck no,”_ Fury answered. _“How do I even know you have my asset? I need to talk to Hawkeye before I can begin negotiating an exchange.”_ That was a lie; SHIELD had a no-negotiation policy. Fullstop. This wasn’t commonly known - they would often play at negotiation intending only to stall.

_“We have your asset. Will you agree to our terms or should we begin sending him to you in pieces?”_ the computer generated voice was without inflection.

_“We need proof of life,”_ Sitwell’s voice responded calmly. _“If you can give that to us I can work out a trade.”_

_“We will be in contact.”_

The second audio file was even more curt.

_“Show me my agent or get the fuck off my line,”_ Fury demanded as soon as the call connected.

_“You will get your proof of life when we get the first data packet.”_

_“Son, I don’t know how many hostages you’ve taken in your day but that is now how our organization runs. Until I see proof you’re not getting squat.”_

Natasha’s expression was flat and angry. She knew that because she was intimately familiar with what all of her expressions felt and looked like, but she felt no inclination to change it. “They don’t have him.”

“They _had_ him,” Fury said, pissed off, but what was new.

“Barton’s been trained to get out of sticky situations. Maybe he slipped their security,” Hill suggested.

“That would explain their reticence over proof of life,” Natasha added.

Fury blew out a frustrated sigh, resting his chin on his steepled fingers. “A similar demand was sent to the World Security Council. Given that they’ve severed ties with Barton, they’re not interested in even a pretence of ransom, but they _are_ interested in burning his record completely and, if possible, terminating him in the eventuality that he _has_ turned.”

Natasha’s expression remained unchanged aside from a hardening of her jaw. At that moment Tony in the full Iron Man armor with only the helmet retracted, and Steve in civilian clothes but carrying his shield burst into the room.

“How the fuck did you— you know what? I don’t care. What?” Fury asked.

“Hawkeye is missing,” Steve said.

“Not that you’d know anything about that,” Tony added, snappish.

“Gentlemen. We were just discussing that fact.”

“I really think that—” Steve began.

“He’s mine you didn’t want him and I did,” Tony broke in, a bit wild-eyed.

“Be that as it may, Barton still retains secrets which are on SHIELD’s payroll, not to mention the World Security Council. Our mutual debts are not expunged so simply.” Natasha glared between Fury and Tony. She didn’t appreciate the proprietary attitude Tony had taken over Clint but she could also not fault it for being anything but genuine patronage and an interest in retaining the archer’s services. “The kidnappers don’t appear interested in money. They want a prisoner exchange, and the miniaturized reflective panel technology that R&D has only just got up and running.”

“So?” Stark asked, obviously partially to bait Fury, and partially honest enquiry.

“So, I’m not about to give personal cloak technology along with captured radical elements to our enemy who has already successfully managed to kidnap one of my best ass— former assets,” Fury concluded.

“Not to mention we don’t think they’ve managed to retain Barton,” Natasha added slyly. Fury needed a reason to hope and Natasha suspected with the right goading, Tony and Steve would concoct some strange scheme to give it to him.

“That will mean less than nothing if the WSC decides to act on this intel.” Hill frowned thunderously. “Their burning Barton would be a mistake. If he were working with the kidnappers, they would have faked a proof of life video feed. If he’s escaped I’d say that’s compelling proof that he’s _not_ working with them.”

“Yes,” Fury agreed. “We’re working on locating Barton right now but no luck yet. We need time and I’m afraid the WSC isn’t going to give that to us.”

Steve glanced around the room. Expressions were uniformly grim and worried. “What if we got someone to pretend to be Clint? Could that give us the time to find him?”

Tony made a doubtful noise. “Like some other archer? That would never work. I mean, wigs, prosthetics might make it work long-distance but the WSC would need—”

“A body double,” Steve finished. “Clint has a half brother that would pass. Not a retinal scan, but... he’s a cop in the second precinct.”

“Legolas has a brother? Living in New York? How did I not know this?” Tony asked, perturbed.

Natasha frowned and blinked once. She hadn’t know it either.

Fury narrowed his eye at Steve. “Walsh?” Steve nodded. “Do you think he’d go for it?”

Steve shrugged. “It’s worth a try. If he won’t agree to it or it doesn’t work we’re not really any worse off. Walsh’s distraction might give us the time we need to find Clint.”

“Can you get in contact with him?” Fury asked. Steve nodded a sharp affirmative. “Then do it. Romanoff - see if you can hook a few paparazzi to catch you on a casual meetup with Hawkeye and the Captain here. It’ll be more convincing if the evidence doesn’t come from SHIELD directly.”

“You want my help with finding Barton,” Tony told Fury with a dark expression. Fury got a sour look but nodded.

\--

Walsh looked very earnestly at Steve. “This is a terrible idea. I am having difficulty telling you how bad an idea this is.”

“The Avengers need a Hawkeye right now. You’re the option.”

“I am a _cop_.” The vehemence in Walsh’s voice caused Steve to rock back on the diner stool. “I will get someone killed if you parade me out as being Hawkeye. I am not...” He shook his head and glared. “No.”

“You wouldn’t be expected to do- I know you can’t shoot a bow and you wouldn’t be expected to have his same skill set. We need to give plausible deniability to the rumors that Barton was kidnapped. We need someone who looks like Clint to be chummy with the team and get a few photos snapped, and we really can use eyes up high.”

“I don’t have experience with those kinds of tactics. I am a pair of boots on the ground. You want me to run a perp down in an alley and I’m good, but if you need tactical calls from 100 stories, I guarantee you I will make the wrong call.”

Steve buried his face in his hands, running fingers through his hair. A thought struck him. “You played ball, right?”

Walsh frowned, suspicious. “Yeah.”

“It’s the same thing - keep your eyes on the ball, spot for the rest of the team and call out when you see the situation changing. There probably won’t be any combat requirement and if there is, that’s all we’d ask of you. Please.” Steves’ eyes pleaded with Walsh. If they could get the WSC off their backs, it would give them enough wiggle room for Tony to track down their errant team member.

“One condition.”

“Name it.”

“You, the Avengers, and SHIELD all owe me favors. Separate favors. Supply and demand.” Walsh had a sly, slightly unhinged look that said he took the business of favors very seriously.

Steve spit in his palm and held it towards the detective. Walsh did the same and they shook solemnly. “You want pancakes?”

Steve checked his phone which was blinking with a message. “I could eat, but right now we need to be at a photo op with the Black Widow at a cafe down the street from the Tower. Can you leave now?” Steve asked.

Walsh frowned thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess.” Steve set one of Clint’s shirts on the counter.

“Change and lock up; we’re on the clock.”

\--

Natasha had managed to snag a trio of cameramen who would no-doubt grow into a knot of eager gossip-rag journalists during their coffee break. Natasha waited for the boys in her incognito-but-not-incognito Black Widow getup, huge sunglasses shading her from camera glare and a slanting shaft of afternoon sun. Her expression didn’t change when she first caught sight of Walsh but then, she was trained in the espionage business. “Clint,” she prompted carefully, stretching out a hand towards the stranger who would play at being a man closer than a brother to her while she sought the real thing out. He was dressed in one of Clint’s purple fashion disasters and dark slacks. He would do.

Natasha had scrolled through the secret file kept on Clint’s half-brother while she’d been busy catching the attention of her film crew. Walsh was older than Clint but hadn’t suffered the same sort of severe privation which Clint had early in life. Their ages were passably similar, their bearings surprisingly alike. The hand that she folded between both of her own was calloused, if from triggers more than bowstrings, and had the solid feeling of strength borne of hard labor. He looked at her with lost eyes, just the wrong shade of hazel, but followed her subtle guidance to sit beside her on a rickety cafe chair which almost touched her own. Steve perched on the one across from them.

“I ordered for you boys already,” Natasha demurred, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, Natasha,” Steve said with a smile.

“Natasha,” Walsh repeated, barely a murmur under his breath, “I’m sure that’s fine,” he added.

Steve talked at Walsh and Natasha. Walsh proved to be either a better than expected actor, or utterly unflappable under even the most unusual of circumstances. He relaxed into a sort of loose-limbed sprawl that was close enough to Clint’s to pass, and laughed easily at Steve’s description of a flea market encounter. Their drinks arrived along with a few small pastries. It was the sort of upscale cafe that put little crumbly biscuits on the saucers accompanying the coffee. Walsh drank his coffee and played with his biscuit until it was only caramel-scented crumbs around his saucer. Natasha could see the slightest pinch of tension around his eyes that spoke of his discomfort with being paraded on display as a half-brother he barely knew.

She leaned over to whisper in his ear. They were intimately close, cheek to cheek, Natasha’s hair covering the movement of their lips. “You’re doing well. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

A warm puff of breath against her cheek indicated a self-deprecating chuckle. “Thanks. It’s a pleasure to meet you too. Some of the boys back at the precinct are huge fans of yours.”

Natasha leaned back, a coy eyebrow raised. “Just some of them?” Natasha knew from experience that Steve heard everything they’d whispered. “Not you?”

Walsh actually blushed and ducked his head, picking up his coffee as though it would protect him. “Well I’m, ahh, spoken for. I do appreciate all your team did during the Battle. I saw the briefs that said you were the one to close the portal. That was some damned fine work.”

Natasha hummed appreciatively. SHIELD had been assiduous at disseminating briefs on the whereabouts and contributions of the various Avengers to curtail complaints from the precincts about infringement of jurisdictions. Apparently it had worked. They dallied in the cafe for another twenty minutes. Steve polished off the remains of the pastries under Natasha’s indulgent gaze.

“We’re heading back to the Tower,” Steve told her unnecessarily. “Tony has some equipment to check out with Clint.” Steve wasn’t half bad at the subterfuge thing when he needed to be, Natasha would admit. Steve nodded politely at Natasha and led the way out of the cafe. A few quick cameraphone shots were taken along with a quick, blinding splash of paparazzi flash bulbs. Walsh winced and covered his eyes, throwing a reproachful look at the offenders. He looked like an internet cat meme.

\--

A Man In Black attached himself to Steve and Walsh as they walked towards the Tower. “That’s Agent Sitwell,” Steve supplied. “He’s our SHIELD attache.”

“I’ll be keeping an eye out for you during this assignment,” Sitwell told him. _Eye on you, more like it_ , Walsh thought. The paparazzi dispersed readily, mostly following Natasha who patiently encouraged it. “SHIELD appreciates your willingness to cooperate in this matter.”

The lobby of Stark Tower was beautiful and ostentatious and just a touch of gilded art deco opulence which seemed at odds with Stark’s usual sleek aesthetics. “You’ll have access to Barton’s quarters and the common level; otherwise you’ll have to get someone to give you access,” Sitwell continued. “If you plan on leaving the Tower, contact me. Otherwise I’ll leave you with Rogers.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Steve assured the agent. Sitwell nodded and disappeared through a nondescript door behind reception.

Steve got in an open elevator and pressed his thumb to the reader. “JARVIS?” he asked the ceiling.

“Yes Sir?”

“This is Clint’s brother, Jason Walsh.” Walsh couldn’t see any cameras but he had the crawling feeling of being watched. “Can you please collect biometrics on him and set up the appropriate permissions?”

“Indeed, Captain. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Walsh.”

Walsh raised his eyebrows in inquiry at Steve. The elevator rose swiftly enough that Walsh’s ears popped. “JARVIS is Tony’s robot butler.”

“As I have no physical form, technically I’m merely an artificial intelligence given control over some of the systems within the Tower.”

“So you’re like... HAL?” Walsh asked.

“I assure you, Sir, I have no homicidal tendencies.” JARVIS effectively ended the conversation by opening the elevator doors. “If you need anything during your stay here, please let me know.”

A large vase dominated the entryway, filled with arrows like a deadly bouquet. Walsh took a few steps in with Steve steering him towards the living room.

“You didn’t say anything about living in Clint’s - what the hell?” Walsh stared at the giant mural of a ferris wheel dominating Clint’s living area. It was artful, but very... purple. “Nevermind. I have work - crime solving, important, detective work. I can’t just hang out in my superhero half-brother’s bachelor pad waiting for super-villainy to surface so I can pretend to be him while wandering around the city like a socialite and getting my picture taken at swanky cafes.”

“We need you nearby in case super-villainy _does_ surface. Besides, you’ll need to get acquainted with his gear. I’m sure under the circumstances he’ll understand letting someone else touch his bow.” Steve waited in the entryway while Walsh toured Clint’s quarters. “SHIELD said they transferred some of your clothes if you want- if you don’t want to wear his clothes. I need to take you down to the armory to pick up his bow, and we can make sure the armor fits well enough then too.” 

Walsh changed back into his own shirt and tie. In a weird way, wearing his brother’s clothes felt like wearing a dead man’s. He hadn’t worked more than a couple of kidnappings, but the statistics were known to every cop. His brother had been gone for almost twenty hours, and the demands were not going to be met. Yes, there was something hinky going on with his captors and yeah, his brother wasn’t the normal kidnap fodder... but that just brought in a whole slew of unknowns. He and Clint had met when they were adults, scarred and twisted in their own ways, and had never been what anybody would call close. They saw each other almost regularly when Clint wasn’t assigned abroad, often with Phil Coulson who-was-now-dead. They weren’t close, but they were blood. Nobody messed with a cop’s family in his city.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked, a tentative hand on his arm. Walsh shook his head. His expression had grown progressively darker as he thought on the gravity of the situation.

“Yeah. I’m just worried about him is all.”

Tony ran into them in the hallway heading towards the armory. He looked as though he had been waiting in the hall for a juicy gossip opportunity. Walsh suspected the computer butler for tattling and/or spying.

“Holy-” Tony flailed, arms and hands going in an erratic pattern in front of his face and he actually did a full three-hundred and sixty degree turn, coming back to stare at Walsh. “Shit. You could be Barton, except for the tie.”

Walsh raised an eyebrow at Steve. “Clint’s not much for business attire.” Walsh glanced down at his clothes - suit jacket and slacks, dark tie matching his jacket - and shrugged. It was exactly what he would be wearing to work anyway, and this was just like another assignment. Okay, crazier than his usual assignments, but still. He was comfortable in his clothes.

“He’s a hand-and-a-half kind of guy unless someone else knots him in. Full windsor there, though - bold choice. Tony Stark.” Tony held out a hand and they shook. “I pulled out one of the tactical bows for you. It looks almost exactly like Barton’s, but it has a much lighter draw-strength so you could actually pull it if you needed to. Here.” Without preamble, Tony slung an arm over Walsh’s shoulders and walked them to the armory.

“The costume is over there, bows hang here and I can get you the codes for his quiver. Do _not_ skimp on the safety equipment, and for the love of god, if you want to convince anybody you’re him don’t wear anything with sleeves.”

“Oh-kay...” Walsh drawled, stopping in front of the case holding his armor. “Do you know what he wears under this getup?”

Stark looked at Steve, baffled. “He has some underarmor for the vest. I’d say briefs are always a good idea? Just speaking from experience with SHIELD tailoring.”

Walsh raised his eyebrows and worked his mouth into a few odd shapes before clapping his hands. “Okay then.” Without waiting for privacy he began loosening his tie. Whatever the costume was made of it slid on easily enough, skimming over his thighs and zipping up the front. It did so in a manner that made it clear that it would have to be peeled off once he was filthy and soaked with sweat, but the material felt like it could take a bullet or two. The knee pads provided a surprising range of motion and the boots were like everything he wished his tactical gear was and more. He’d have to work to twist his ankle, and the toes were reinforced.

“I could go for one of these getups for casual wear,” he commented.

“They’re around forty-five thousand per set, not including weaponry.”

“So, out of my pay grade,” Walsh concluded.

Stark shrugged, part self-depreciating and part grudging embarrassment, probably over how much the team cost to outfit. For what it took to outfit and maintain one of the Avengers, his whole precinct could probably be retrofitted and upgraded. 

Walsh wasn’t short-sighted enough to think that his entire precinct could have done anything to stop Loki’s attack. In the midst of the battle everyone had been pounding the pavement, helping with the evacuation or attempting to maintain the airspace around Manhattan by whatever means they could scramble together with the National Guard. As much as he might resent the Avengers for their status and attitudes, he recognized how badly his city needed someone like that at their disposal and beyond the reach of politicians. It was very clear to him that Manhattan would have been a smoking crater if not for their efforts.

“I don’t like when people break my things. Clint is the most breakable member of the team.” Stark shrugged. Steve glared as though he’d like to argue with Stark but couldn’t find a good rejoinder. “He’s a good crash-test dummy for new safety equipment. I have a redesign of those dutch invisible helmet things underway for him right now.”

“You’re not the most breakable? What makes you stronger than Clint?” Walsh asked with a critical eye.

Stark snorted a humorless laugh. “Not stronger; it’s just that I’m already as broken as I can get.”

\--

Walsh passed the afternoon on the range, warming into his brother’s armor. Clint was broader through the shoulders but close enough through the trunk that the vest didn’t restrict his movements or look as though he was wearing someone else’s clothes. He had joined his brother on a private range, trading jibes and weapons when they had first met. He wasn’t good at it, and anybody who knew the sport would laugh at his lack of ability and probably his form, but he could pull a bowstring without looking like a baby deer trying to play the harp.

The hairs on Walsh’s neck rose. He finished out the arrows he already had laid out, actually hitting the target, before putting the bow aside. Under the guise of adjusting his shooting glove he glanced around the gallery. Natasha was leaning against a wall, eyes sharp on him. “How am I doing?”

Natasha shrugged. Natasha seemed like a woman spun of secrecy and misdirection, and he respected that. “I’ll pose with the bow but if I need to shoot someone, I’m using my gun.”

“That’s probably wise.”

“Oh, come on; I’m not that bad.”

“You look pretty enough but you’ll miss your shot and it will be obvious you’re not him.”

“You called me pretty.” Walsh clasped his hands over his heart in faked endearment.

Natasha eyed him for a few long moments. Her expression was solemn and difficult to read, even for him, but it had a flavor of judgement and betrayal, with a hint of anger. “Do you want to spar?” she asked finally.

“Uh, no.” She raised an eyebrow at that.

“Not man enough?” she baited.

“I already know you could take me. You could probably take ten of me.” A micro-expression that might have been a frown flitted over Natasha’s features. “If I need to pretend to be Clint, I need to not be broken and bruised.”

“I wouldn’t break anything.”

“Tempting promise.”

The corners of Natasha’s mouth turned down while her eyes lit up; she was suppressing a smile. “You’re smarter than you look.” She sounded disappointed.

Walsh shrugged one shoulder, “I try.” Their silence was uncomfortable. “Look, I know I’m not him - I’m just playing him on TV for a few days until your guys find him and bring him home.”

Her eyes slid over and off him. “Clint never mentioned you.”

The corners of Walsh’s mouth turned down in contemplation. “I was never a big part of his life. You know, we were adults when we met.”

“Clint takes family very seriously.”

Walsh frowned, turning to his bow to wrestle it back into its case. The mechanism by which it folded gave him trouble. Natasha reached around him, compressing it at just the right angle and the whole thing folded up like origami.

“I think being tight-lipped might be congenital,” Walsh replied. Clint had never talked about his co-workers, his friends, or his family in anything but distant-past long-ago-hurt terms. Based on how Natasha had treated him in public, she and Clint were as close as siblings, or fucking, or (creepily, perhaps) both. 

The public persona of the Black Widow was enigmatic. The demure mystery woman who flitted through combat as a streak of red and black had no political causes, no agendas, nothing that fired up her soul. Occasionally she would sign autographs, mostly for young girls. She had a remarkably short list of stalkers, Walsh suspected due to direct interventions on her part. This very human woman in front of him, washes of alternating fear and anger sparking out at the world at large was not what he was expecting. She covered it well, but she cared deeply for his brother.

“You know he never mentioned you, either,” Walsh told her finally. “I respect a man’s secrets. I knew he had ‘em just like I have mine, but... I think he was trying to protect us both in his own way.” She didn’t say anything to him, the pale, immobile swell of her cheek nevertheless giving him the impression she was hanging on his words. “We were different parts of his life. By keeping us separate maybe he thought he’d keep our problems separate, too.”

“That never works,” Natasha told him, almost gently. Walsh shrugged. “But I don’t think that ever stopped Barton for making the wrong call for the right reason.”

\--

Walsh slept in his brother’s bed. It was weird; the sheets smelled wrong and it was too squishy, but he slept with the dedication of a 20 year veteran of the police force. He woke with the sun, gorgeous slanting rays of light slicing across his eyes. Walsh stumbled into a pair of pants and into his brother’s kitchen. The fridge was stocked with three gallons of milk, some fruit, and a dozen meal-replacement beverages. Walsh rolled his eyes in frustration. “Where can I get some real food?” he muttered to himself.

“Sir may wish to use the kitchen on the communal level,” a cultured British voice informed him.

“Holyjesusfuck,” Walsh exclaimed while spinning and falling over.

“Apologies, Sir. I did not mean to startle.”

As soon as his ass had connected with the floor, Walsh had remembered the AI butler. “That’s... okay,” Walsh responded, glancing up at the ceiling. A flock of wheeling birds was painted on a sky-scape. “Can you direct me to the communal level?” he asked after a moment.

“Of course.”

The kitchen was empty when he got there, but the lights flicked on obediently. The fridge was full and the cupboards were well stocked. Walsh got out pans and knives and began to cook.

There was no bell on the door, so Walsh was a bit startled when the flicker of a shadow passed in his peripheral vision. He turned swiftly, startling Doctor Banner. “Sorry, I didn’t— Nevermind.”

Banner grinned in a lopsided, half-hearted way. “I’m not used to living with anybody that is physically capable of startlement. I should have said good morning.” Banner puttered around the kitchen setting up the coffee pot to his specifications and pulling mugs out of the cupboard. Walsh finished chopping potatoes for a breakfast hash and moved to mix pancake batter. “You don’t have to cook for everyone, you know,” Banner said when he sat, waiting for the coffee to brew.

“I know. It’s what I do.” Walsh liked to cook. He liked the confused, hungry people that wandered into his diner off the street. He liked the regulars who ducked in at odd hours. He liked surprising people with each plate of food he served up. The contemplative rhythm of prepping vegetables for the day, and the sharp anxiety of working short-order for five breakfast orders at once were equally settling to him.

A green light lit up on the coffee pot. Banner perked in a pavlovian response, poured a mug for each of them, and settled at the kitchen island to watch Walsh work. It felt like home. “I’m, uh—” Banner began, intending to introduce himself.

“Doctor Hulk, yeah I know.” Banner’s eyebrows shot up. Walsh shrugged. “What? We got a briefing packet on all you guys. Hair like that, a guy remembers.” Banner scrubbed a hand through his salt and pepper hair, making it stand up even more.

The hash went in a pan, in the oven. He rummaged in the crisper and pulled out some fruit, some bacon, and a flat of eggs.

“Steve says you live in a diner.”

Walsh hitched his hip against the counter and gave his very good mug of coffee the attention it warranted. “There’s a diner in the front of my apartment,” Walsh corrected. Technically he lived in the storage room of his diner, yes, but he preferred thinking of it the other way around.

“How did that happen?”

Walsh shrugged. “The rent’s cheap.”

“There’s lots of places where rent is cheap.”

“Not in New York,” Walsh replied. He didn’t like to talk about the strange impulse that led him to live in a worn-down diner, and he was especially disinclined to talk about it with strangers. He liked his life. He liked where he lived, and he was proud of his work. He just didn’t like to talk about it.

Banner gave him a clear, ‘message received’ look and dropped that line of questioning. “Where did you learn to cook?” Walsh shrugged again. “You know you give Clint a run for his money on the taciturn front.”

“But when we have something to say, you all listen.”

The click-click of very high heels preceded a willowy redhead in severe business ware. “It smells like— Oh!” She pulled up short when she saw Walsh at the stove. “I didn’t— what’s going on?”

“Steve recruited Clint’s doppelganger half-brother to pretend to be Clint while SHIELD tries to find him so that the WSC won’t send out a kill order,” Banner reported calmly. “This is Detective Walsh. Walsh, this is Pepper. She’s... I think we can safely say the Avengers would have crumbled into the sea without her, before now.”

Pepper stared at him intently. “The resemblance really is uncanny,” she said finally. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She held out a long-fingered hand. Walsh hurriedly wiped his hands down the thighs of his pants and shook. “Ma’am.”

“Walsh is cooking breakfast.”

“Oh, that’s...” In a whisper she asked Banner, “Is that a good idea?”

“My kitchen is a diner. I live in the— why is this such a big deal?”

“Clint covers everything in catsup and once set pre-prepared hash browns on fire,” Bruce deadpanned.

“I once saw him burn one of those cup-o-noodles in the microwave,” Pepper added.

“How did he— nevermind. You are going to sit down and eat breakfast. As soon as breakfast is ready.” The bacon was cooking up nicely and Walsh began pouring pancakes. Pepper frowned, concerned, but sat. Bruce passed her a mug of coffee.

“This smells lovely,” Pepper offered.

Walsh gave her a small smile which clearly said, ‘I know, right?’ “How do you take your eggs?” he asked.

“Poached,” Pepper returned primly, “But however is fine if you’re cooking.”

Walsh raised his eyebrows at Bruce. “What Pepper said.”

He put a pot of water on to boil.

By the time Steve walked in, sniffing hopefully, Bruce and Pepper were crowding around the pot watching in wonder as their poached eggs slowly rose to the surface of the bubbling water from where they had sunk to cook. Bruce was explaining to Pepper why the vinegar helped bind together the whites into neat disks. Walsh was chopping fruit with a bemused expression.

“Good morning,” Steve greeted politely. Walsh flipped pancakes onto plates, garnishing one and setting it in front of Steve. Kiwi slices and a wedge of cantaloupe stared up at Steve in a fruity smile.

The early morning crowd settled with food, chatting quietly. Sitwell appeared halfway through breakfast looking rumpled and hopeful. Walsh privately thought Sitwell looked like an optimistic egg which wore glasses, or perhaps a Men In Black muppet. As he served the agent, Walsh casually asked, “Any update on my brother?”

Sitwell was obviously riveted by the plate Walsh was putting together for him, and blinked. “That’s classified,” he responded almost on automatic. Walsh let the agent have a moment with his breakfast, breaking his still soft egg yolks over his hash with loving reverence.

“Come on,” was all Walsh said.

Sitwell glanced at Walsh, appearing to make an instantaneous decision. “We know he was taken by one of the more organized elements of an international white supremacist group. We’re doing our best to track where they went but we’re honestly not having a lot of luck.” Sitwell ducked his head. “Stark is on it; he thinks there might be a way to track one of Barton’s old SubQ tracers.”

“So you got nothing.”

The tension in the room was suddenly palpable. Sitwell deflated a little. “We don’t have much,” he admitted.

“What do you think the odds are?” Walsh asked into the sudden hushed silence.

“Barton’s survived worse for longer. We don’t have proof of life, but it seems most likely due to Barton’s continued escape and evasion; they wouldn’t have killed him before even attempting ransom.”

Walsh hadn’t really let himself feel any of the entirely justified anxiety over his brother’s kidnapping. The whirlwind of new environment and people had kept him off-balance enough that he hadn’t had time to take a breath and settle into the reality of the situation. Kidnap victims were time-sensitive: every cop knew that. This wasn’t the usual child-stolen-by-parent-without-custody or woman-assaulted-and-shoved-in-a trunk situation. Things in the Second were never what most precincts would call routine, but his brother was a combatant in a secret war that was quickly becoming public and he had to admit, the rules on this side of things were not ones he was familiar with.

From the way his team was reacting, Walsh surmised that Clint’s situation was not one which was unfamiliar to them. Sitwell almost acted as though this thing was routine. “What’s the odds?” Walsh asked again.

“Better than seventy percent at recovery.” The tenseness in Bruce and Pepper showed that they hadn’t known that they were that low. The estimate was slightly higher than Walsh was expecting, he realized with relief. “Detective,” Sitwell said, trying to sound reassuring and calm and everything Walsh himself had trained himself to sound like when talking to emotional family members, “we’re doing all we can. If there’s something you can help with you’ll be the first to know.”

The elevator doors opened, disgorging a suspicious Casey Shraeger, dressed for work. “Detective Shraeger,” JARVIS announced her, like she was being presented at a cotillion.

“Walsh?” she asked, glancing around at the assembled diners.

“Casey,” Walsh responded easily, “Come on in. You want some?” Walsh gestured at the still-warm dishes.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She cast confused glances at everyone staring at her. Steve chose that moment to slip out of the stairwell, nose raised hopefully sniffing the air. “Woah.”

His head snapped towards her almost comically quickly. “Who are- How-” Steve glanced to Sitwell in confusion.

“Jesus - I should let the government kidnap you more often.” Shraeger raked her eyes up and down Steve in obvious appreciation.

Steve blushed.

“What are you doing here, Casey?” Walsh dished up plates for Steve and his partner.

“Oh, ya know, making sure you’re not _dead_. I went in to get you this morning and some fake-Walsh is behind the grill. He _asked me what I wanted_.”

Walsh pinned Sitwell with a critical glare, “Did you replace me with some Denny’s fry cook?”

“We stationed an agent at your residence to confound anybody looking for you. Your work was of course informed that you were on special assignment.”

Shraeger shrugged dismissively, “What special assignment is my partner going to go on without me?”

“Our agent was instructed not to reveal Detective Walsh’s location. I’d be interested to hear how you got that out of him.”

“He leaned over to ask me what I wanted and I knocked his forehead on the counter. I grabbed him by his stupid man in black tie and I told him if he didn’t tell me where my partner was I was going to go exactly as far as he would to find out where _his_ partner had gotten whisked off to.” Sitwell raised an impressed eyebrow. “He was pretty okay with telling me Walsh was in Stark Tower.”

“I thought it best to direct her up,” JARVIS added.

“Creepy ghost in the machine going on there, by the way,” Shraeger gestured at the ceiling.

“I prefer comparisons to 2001,” JARVIS said. Shraeger pointed at the ceiling with a, ‘see, I told you’ look.

Stark stormed in a moment later, hair awry and looking sweaty from working or a workout. “JARVIS said a Shraeger was in here. Why the hell did JARVIS let a Shraeger in here?” He pulled up short at the confused and somewhat belligerent looks he was receiving from everyone.

Casey pinked noticeably.

“Stark, this is my partner. Casey Shraeger. Casey, the jackass that owns the building,” Walsh introduced.

“Jack— Wait. You’re Baby-Shraeger. You’re—”

“I’m a cop.”

“Your dad—”

“Isn’t me.”

“Am I missing something?” Bruce asked observing the stare-off between Shraeger and Stark with the detached air of a sports spectator.

\--

Walsh stared at the giant mural adorning his brother’s wall, slumped over on the couch with a beer resting on his sternum. These jokers were never going to find his brother. Coulson he would have trusted to find his brother; the combination of staid determination and fanatical attention to detail made for an excellent detective. Fury, though? Stark? 

He blew out a frustrated breath.

Casey raised her eyebrows at him. She had her own beer gripped around the neck out of a grim sort of determination to join him in his sulking anxiety.

“That’s it. We’re working this case.”

“This... case?” Casey asked him, nevertheless perking up at the statement.

“Kidnapping and ransom, affiliations with gun trafficking and international terrorism. Suspected to be a white supremacist group. Get Banks, Beaumont and Cole in here; I’m going to need some of their contacts. Let the Chief know I need them for my assignment?” Casey nodded, pulling out her phone. “JARVIS? I’m going to need whatever they gave Stark on Clint’s kidnapping.”

“Regretfully, you are not cleared for that information.”

“Couldn’t you just claim to have confused me with my brother?” Walsh asked plaintively.

Unamused silence greeted his suggestion.

Casey slipped out of the room while Walsh argued with JARVIS. He was about to storm down to Stark’s workshop and pound on the glass until he got what he wanted when JARVIS acquiesced. “Agent Sitwell has granted you access.”

“Really?”

“I believe your partner enlisted Ms. Romanoff to convince him of the wisdom of that action.”

“You go girl,” Walsh muttered, pulling up electronic files. The other detectives would be there shortly and he wanted everything available.

\--

Beaumont whistled, “Living the high life, here,” she said.

Walsh looked uncomfortable. “This is all Stark.”

“Do I want to know why there’s a ferris wheel painted on the living room?” Banks asked skeptically.

“My brother used to be a carney.”

“Because that’s not creepy.” Shraeger thwacked Banks on the shoulder and gave him a look which clearly said ‘play nice’.

“You said there was a case? Is it to do with him?” Cole suggested, trying to get everyone back on track.

“Yeah. He got kidnapped. It’s all very secret police but they think it was someone with the eighty-eights. HYDRA lite.”

“Those guys are...” Beaumont shuddered. “I know a guy in counterterrorism we can talk to.”

“Do we know where he was taken from?”

“Yeah, but guys, look. SHIELD has already been over this. If it’s possible through technology they’ve got it covered between their Big Brother software and Stark. And they still have nothing. If we’re going to break this it’s going to be with contacts and legwork. Lets look over the files and see where we can fill in some gaps and narrow down the search area.”

They got down to it. The white boards turned out to be digital facsimiles which they began filling with photos and notes as the team built a picture of the kidnapping starting with the facts and moving to motivations and assumptions.

Cole ducked out to meet a CI. Banks set up a meeting with Beaumont’s guy in counterterrorism. Casey took a call in the hallway from the Chief.

“I didn’t even know you had a brother,” Beaumont hissed at Walsh.

Walsh rubbed the back of his neck in discomfort. “I didn’t until a few years ago. We’re half brothers.”

“And that’s an excuse for not telling me this?”

“Obviously not,” Walsh mumbled. Beaumont huffed, obviously upset but taking in Walsh’s equally distraught face. She stood, hitching a hip against the conference room table. She held open her arms to him and he went readily, burying his face in her shoulder.

“This is the job, baby,” she told him gently rubbing his back. “Sometimes our kind of people get into shit and then we get them out of it. Right?”

Walsh squeezed her, drawing strength from the embrace.

“Uh... do you guys need a minute alone?” Shraeger asked having walked back in during their exchange.

“No,” Walsh replied almost petulantly.

Beaumont kissed him on the temple and gave him a gentle shove towards the whiteboard.

\--

“I don’t have an exact location but one of the guys who Beaumont’s guy knows said he knows some guys that were looking for contractors upstate. Hush-hush off-the-record sorts of shit. Why can’t the sick fucks just hire union?” Banks groused over the phone.

“Because that would make it too easy for us,” Shraeger replied.

“It’s not an exact location but I have a county at least. Do you think that will narrow down the search?”

“We’ll see. Forward me the info?” Walsh asked, tapping the call buttons for Stark and Sitwell.

“I’m busy—” Stark replied at the same time Sitwell said, “What?”

“My people think there’s a good chance Clint’s in Cheshire County near Manodanoc State Park.”

“How much area is that?” Stark asked.

“About 700 square miles,” JARVIS replied smoothly. “The tracking program should be able to re-initiate Agent Barton’s SubQ provided it hasn’t been removed.”

Stark made a pleased noise. “It wasn’t putting out a signal so they wouldn’t find it without a good x-ray. Great. We can take it down to four or five square miles and it’s all UAVs and SHIELD after that.”

“Good work, gentlemen.”

Stark made a deprecating noise in the back of his throat. “Leave the kind words duties for Agent Coulson. He was a lot more believable.”

\--

“Oh my god.” Shraeger covered her mouth with a fist in a childish gesture, trying to suppress her giggles. Beaumont, Cole and Banks had luckily been shuttled off into a conference room to review UAV footage.

“Shut up,” Walsh told her. Her phone clicked indicating she had taken a photo. “Fuck.” Walsh’s head dropped in defeat. Why did his brother’s armor have a giant arrow pointing at his junk? Why had he not noticed that when he’d tried on the armor before?

“We’re _partners_. We have to _trust each other_ ,” Shraeger told him, still giggling.

“There’s a reason it’s called blackmail material. You’re riding with Sitwell.”

“But I want-” Walsh gave her a look.

“If only one of us has to ride in the jet, only one of us gets to ride in the jet.”

Shraeger mumbled something that might have been, “Some of us _like_ jets,” but turned to the agent expectantly. Steve rushed by them in full Captain America getup, clapping Walsh on the shoulder as he passed. He resettled the quiver once more and followed at a jog.

Natasha was flying, so Steve helped him sort out his earpiece and filled him on on the call signs and the situation downtown. A mutant right’s protest had gone ugly and dissolved into a chaos of super-powers, home-made bottle bombs and plain old human panic. If Walsh wasn’t playing Avenger he might have gotten called in on riot control. As it was, advancing lines of armored cops were coming down one side street, attempting to form a cordon, while another line of mounted units were marshalling at the edge of the park in which everything was taking place.

Stark had loaded his quiver with a set of dissolving arrows designed so he could shoot them but not worry about where they came down. Given a flight path of a hundred feet or more they simply blew away into a fine silicon sand. There was a flare in his quiver, and a few arrows loaded with gas to disperse the crowd if he saw the necessity. The tech was nice, but the situation made him anxious.

They opened the hatch about thirty feet up, and Steve simply leapt out, catching a street-lamp on his way down, and landing at a run.

“Cap is on the ground,” Natasha informed Sitwell calmly over the comm. “Hawkeye and I are going into position.” The jet hovered. Walsh wasn’t good at math, or physics, but he was relatively sure that jets shouldn’t be able to hover. “This is your stop,” Natasha informed him. The hatch opened once more and Walsh saw he was expected to jump the yawning chasm to the roof of a building overlooking the chaos. News choppers were beginning to circle.

“Just jump, Walsh,” Shraeger’s voice over the comm, a little bit soft and a little goading was all the push he needed. Walsh jumped. He landed hard, banging his knee on a safety rail and cursing softly.

“Hawkeye is deployed,” Natasha informed the team, guiding the jet towards a landing spot outside the safety cordon.

“What are the eyes in the sky seeing?” Steve asked after a moment. Walsh had been distracted by the zip of jets and flight-capable mutants. Hurriedly he clipped in and began scanning the seething mass of people.

The beauty of being so high up was that the living beast that was made up of individual humans became clear. The zoom function in his sunglasses allowed him to get a closeup view when necessary, but the large movements were what he was there for. “Mounted units have a good handle on the west side but they could use some air support on two flight-capables,” Walsh reported. “There’s a major break in the protests through 9th - it might be viable for funneling civilians out.”

Steve went barreling into the thick of the bottle-bomb brigade, bouncing his shield off offenders. Natasha flowed through the crowd more quietly, neon zip ties shoved in the back of her utility belt like tailfeathers getting portioned out to anybody resisting her. Walsh fired off a few arrows towards the crowd knowing they would never hit. The steady turnaround of rioter movement and Avenger counter-moves to maintain the cordon along with the police forces became a calming rhythm. SHIELD funneled troops in and began ushering or hauling out people done with the idea of rioting. Some SHIELD simply shooed towards home; others they took into custody.

It was messy but not uncontrollable. Steve moved faster than Walsh would have credited before seeing him in action. When Natasha put someone down they stayed down. Iron Man was remarkably capable as the only flight-ready Avenger on the mission. All in all, Walsh was impressed. And terrified to be dangling by a carabiner and a safety rail many stories up over a riot zone filled with mutants.

Sitwell was good at letting him know when a news crew was going to be looking at him so he could stop looking unbalanced and squinting at the seething but rapidly thinning crowd and string up an arrow for photo purposes. He even launched a gas arrow with moderate success, gas cannister skittering along a gravel path and dispensing its payload.

Abruptly, his duties were over. “Come home, Hawkeye.”

Walsh pulled close to the safety rail and unclipped, glancing around himself. There was... nowhere to go. “Uh, guys? How do I get down from here?”

“You just—” Steve started, cutting himself. “Oh, nuts.”

“Barton usually repels,” Sitwell informed him. After a pause, “We’ll send someone to open a roof hatch for you. Good work.”

“No, I got this.” Walsh had taken the special SWAT-lite course with the department. He was qualified to repel. So what if he didn’t like heights... and hadn’t really done this in years.

Shraeger’s voice tried to talk him out of it. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, _Hawkeye_.”

If only he listened to his partner more often.

\--

Natasha appeared in Clint’s bedroom pre-dawn. He didn’t remember exactly what had happened after the riot calmed down but he thought it involved getting tangled in the ladder of a fire escape, and then maybe getting drugged for resisting medical attention. He was never going to live that down. Shraeger probably got video. “Walsh,” she whispered, and he was immediately awake, if not cogent. “We’re going to get him. Your people were great.” 

“I’m coming along,” Walsh replied immediately, though it came out more like, “mmmging long.” He rolled over towards the edge of the bed but stopped with a long groan. Bruises hurt. Bruises hurt a _lot_.

“You’re staying here. The team has got this one.”

“I wanna—” Walsh started.

Natasha shushed him. “Do you trust me?”

“Not particularly,” Walsh groused.

“Well tough shit. Clint trusts me and I’m going to go show him exactly why that trust is well founded.”

“I’m—”

“Shh.” Natasha brushed the hair off his forehead in a gesture he suspected was meant for his brother. “Don’t make me drug you up again because I will.”

Walsh dropped his head back on the pillow and let out a breath. Natasha was gone. “JARVIS, is Beaumont—”

“The Detectives were offered quarters for the night but they preferred to go home.”

Walsh groaned. Good; that was good. “Is anybody else up?”

“Miss Potts. I believe the call to arms woke her as well.” Walsh rolled out of bed with a groan. Nothing felt broken. Screw this being a hero shit - cop and short order cook was good enough for him. A shower worked some of the more painful knots out.

The common level was hushed, the silence broken only by the shush-shush of the ventilation. He started the coffee and put in toast. Pepper arrived as though summoned by the coffee maker, perfectly made up and in a beautiful tailored dress which simultaneously said ‘beautiful woman’ and ‘more of a corporate badass than you could ever hope to be’. She smiled tiredly at Walsh and took the coffee from him.

Neither of them had much of a stomach for breakfast or conversation. They sat in a silent sort of limbo, Walsh reading the e-release of the New York Times sports section, Pepper reading business reports.

When they did get news it was routed through JARVIS. “Incoming call from Mr. Stark.”

“We got him.” Walsh and Pepper let out sighs of relief. “He’s a bit banged up but he’ll be fine. Have eggs on for when we get home?”

“Eggs I can do.”

\--

Banged up was a bit of an understatement. When Clint limped into the common room, supported by an air cast on his ankle and Natasha under his shoulder, he looked like death warmed over. A massive contusion covered the left side of his face and there were scrapes down both his forearms wrapped in medical gauze and tape. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten for a few days.

“You look like shit,” Walsh said.

“Fuck you. You try playing hide and seek in a 4000 square foot office building with nazi wackjobs with fucking magic alien guns for three days.”

Clint softened his words with a raised arm, inviting a manly hug. Walsh obliged.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Walsh said into his shoulder.

“Yeah. Thanks for getting your people on it. Tony said he wouldn’ta been able to find me without their help.”

“Fucking Nazi’s, man. Really?”

“Well, when you hang out with the boy anachronism there, shit happens.”

Steve shook his head in equal parts frustration and fondness.

\--

“I could hire you - we need a cook around this place otherwise the takeout boxes are going to reach critical concentrations.”

Walsh gave Stark a dubious look, “You couldn’t afford me. Tell you what, though - you guys should come by the diner. I cook better in my own setup.”

“It gets better?” Sitwell asked, starry eyed. Walsh had learned that Sitwell had almost religious feelings about greasy spoon food.

“I chicken-fry a mean steak,” Walsh told the agent, nodding. “I’m not open regular hours, though, so-”

“My people took care of that. There’s a twitter feed attached to a lightswitch in your back room. You flip it and it tells folks when you open and close.”

“You broke into my apartment?”

“I broke into your diner, which by the way, has a highly questionable health code record. There’s a new fire-suppression system and I upgraded the window glass, too.” A conversation in a pair of looks passed between Walsh and Clint. “Also you’re now officially approved by the Avengers, on Yelp.”

“Bruce is a big fan,” Natasha’s mouth twitched just a hair when she spoke which was as good as a broad grin on her.

“Will I get any shit from the World Security Council?” Walsh asked warily.

“We hushed you up in the reports. Your existence is still proprietary knowledge of SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative.”

Walsh nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, then. I got a life to get back to. The guys at the precinct are already giving me shit about time off.” He leveled a serious look at Steve and Sitwell in turn, “Remember the deal; you guys owe me.”

“I won’t forget,” Steve promised at the same time Sitwell said, “We have it on record at SHIELD.”

Walsh nodded. He and Clint embraced one last time. “I expect to see you around more often.”

Their brows furrowed in almost identical expressions of suppressed emotion. “Yeah. Sure thing.”


End file.
